Accused American ISIS Plotter Was “Set Up,” Family Says

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, the former Virginia National Guardsman arrested last week on charges of plotting to provide material support to the Islamic State, was manipulated by a government informant, his siblings say.

Jalloh was also mischaracterized by the government, the family members added, with innocent or thoughtless words twisted to make the 26-year-old naturalized citizen, originally from Sierra Leone, sound like a budding terrorist. Jalloh faces up to 20 years in prison.

“He is just another Mohamed that got set up,” his brother Chernor Jalloh told The Intercept. “He sympathizes with the oppressed abroad. … The FBI used his love for those being oppressed against him by inciting him in all manners that they deemed fit.”

A criminal complaint unsealed last week and widely publicized revealed that Jalloh had been speaking for months with a government informant, who recorded conversations in which Jalloh seemed to support acts of violence. The informant solicited Jalloh’s help in procuring money and weapons that he said would be used in support of ISIS. At one point, Jalloh was provided with a mobile messaging application to help him send $500 to an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS member abroad.

After Jalloh attempted to purchase a rifle at a local gun store, he was placed under arrest.

The government affidavit against Jalloh alleges that he had been radicalized by watching the lectures of former al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki. But his family says that Jalloh was young and impressionable, and had been manipulated by his conversations with the government informant.

Chernor also said he believed his brother looked up to the informant as someone who was older and whose opinion should be respected. “He looked at him as an older brother with more knowledge about what is going on in the Middle East and was trying to understand their plight.”

The use of informants in FBI terrorism cases has become a source of controversy after several high-profile cases in which terrorism plots appeared to have been devised and propagated by the informants themselves. The FBI is believed to have at least 15,000 informants active in the United States.

An undated photo of Jalloh, left, at his military graduation.

While the full details of Jalloh’s interactions with the informant are not yet known, his family says the behavior linked by the government to terrorism is being mischaracterized.

Its unclear how long Jalloh had been under government surveillance. His conversations with the informant lasted several months, though reference is also made in the affidavit to a trip Jalloh took to Nigeria last year. Privacy advocates and whistleblowers have long warned that extended government surveillance could create “databases of ruin” about innocent people, whereby harmful or provocative statements are catalogued over time and then later contextualized in an incriminating manner.

Jalloh’s family claims that in his case, innocent actions and thoughtless words, or “tough talk,” are being conflated together by the government to paint a picture of him that is more nefarious than the reality.

“Mohamed was a military kid, he owned other guns before this all happened, and he generally bought and practiced with guns all the time anyways,” says Jalloh’s sister, Mariatu Jalloh. “He grew up here in Virginia and never thought of something like buying a gun as remarkable or suspicious.” She described Mohamed’s statements to the informant as an emotional response to incitement and said her brother engaged in tough talk to impress someone he respected.

“He was being manipulated by the informant into saying things he would never have otherwise,” she says.

“The government is taking statements and actions that had nothing to do with one another and putting them together to paint a certain picture. … They’re connecting dots.”

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Jalloh is just another innocent patriotic Virginia kid who joined the military, but is now suspected of terrorism, because someone is “connecting dots.”
Like they didn’t do with that other patriotic Virginia military kid who joined the Army, Major Hasan.
Or PFC Naser Abdo.
When you have to make this many excuses for someone’s behavior, you lose.
They are what they are.

And all of that repression is done for the profit of billionaires that profit from the war and arm trade. I hope one day I will see an article at the intercept about phebe novakovic and her husband, she is making money for General Dynamics and her husband for Boeing. Both wokred in defense and cia, they produce conflicts and war and sell arms. Domestic repression is just part of such business.

The United States of America was founded upon a sympathy for the underdog, the oppressed, the minority. That concern for the lessers has been carried over from 1775 until recently, until lawyers, who served the king of england during the American Revolt, found a way to weaponize this American tradition.

they were using huffington post to lead people, me, to articles that were factual , but would make you mad, like how corrupt repubs are. they want to make you mad enough to write something that sounds violent to entrap you. they also used smirky pictures of judge roberts constantly on the front page, why. because the only threatening comment i made that i can think of was in 2010, after citizens united helped dismantle our democracy, i wrote, if i knew i was dying i’d kick his butt. don’t know what other sites they’re watching people in real time, i believe , on. but i’m positive hp is one of them.

that’s what the nsa was built illegally and secretly for. to monitor the right wing corporate elites political enemies , their motto is Discredit, Destroy, Defeat.
it’s happening to me at this moment and has been for years. now they’ve got the neighbors monitoring me and i’ve seen them reporting back to the cop, who lives two doors down. it’s not paranoia if it’s actually happening. and if they haven’t found anything on you after a few years, then they’re setting you up to shut you up, cause just like in china and other fascist dictatorships, any one who tries to teach those who are being brainwashed (by murdoch and right wing media here) the truth, like teachers, journalists, writers, etc, get put in jail. all they have to do is watch you long enough to twist some half truths. anyone who is a threat to their thefts of your govt.

Use the word Provocateur rather than Informant. There have been dozens of cases now of FBI paid provocateurs inciting /provoking young men who didn’t have intent or the wherewithal to carry out violent acts. A number of these paid provocateurs were paid $100,000 by the FEDS. What should be outrageous is that the FBI always found a compliant federal judge who went along with their sting/entrapment scheme and didn’t throw the case out of court. In one case in Florida the FEDS had to try the victim three times before they could find a jury that would convict.

yes, happened when coal baron massey criminal don blankenship bankrupted a competitor coal owner. massey lost, but don’s best friend was wv s.c. judge and an election was coming up and he spent 3 million to elect his guy, so when he appealed it , he had two out of 3 judges. and said, we might not win on appeal this time, but eventually we’ll win. he also only got 6months for a mine accident that killed 29 men.

Use the word Provocateur rather than Informant.
exactly.
simple case of ….. wait a minute – wasnt the excuse of the thieving criminal wallstreet execs that crashed the American economy and robbed mainstreet and who continue to rob mainstreet, wasnt their excuse “the economy made me do it”?

There is quite a difference however between the willingness to rob people and any willingness to hurt people. Exploiting wallstreet execs and thieves to rob America is really easy. There is no evidence presented here of any willingness to hurt Americans.

This is nothing more than me offerring you $1,000,000 to sleep with your wife one night. What a fucking con job.

But why a kid in a national guard unit, was it infantry or explosives unit? May have missed it, but guessing he lives in Northern Va, DC area? If that’s the case I’m sure every “Mohammed” and “Ahmed” are profiled under surveillance and has a “friend” on the internet they don’t really know is a US gov bureaucrat.

Ah, should have read through comments. So he got in touch w/ an informant who turned his name over to FBI.

Now here’s something: aren’t people free to write whatever they want? What if I wanted to get on a comment section of a news site or any site, write comments I don’t mean and sentiments I don’t subscribe to, under the name OngoingDeceit, just to see where dialog/interaction goes?

Re physical acts:
Jalloh going out to buy a firearm prescribed by a ‘terrorist’ he met online may have been done out of curiosity. A real criminal or terrorist is not likely to scrupulously fill out government / store forms to buy equipment and weapons. And don’t we all know that someone is likely following online activity anyway. Jalloh would have appear to be a giant idiot if he thought he could “get away with it”

The elephant in the room here is what if, by chance, the handler loses control of the mark and fails to sting before mark completes the conspiracy fed to him/her? Would the bureau acknowledge the mistake or would they cover it up and let it stand as genuine, homegrown, lone-wolf action?

This is despicable. Thank you for exposing it. The FBI also radicalized Omar Mateen. Law enforcement in general is struggling to justify itself. Even the Dallas shooter was Army reserve. They are trying to say, “See, this is why you need us.” Dallas Police Chief David Brown’s son is also a cop-killer – sacrificed on the altar of his career ambition.

This is called vertical integration; I believe this was San Bernadino issue too. On the one hand saying Iran is attacking so we need to safeguard / encrypt; on the other saying we need to break encryption. Fun. Dig a hole, fill a hole. You need me here on that wall and cont. to pay me near six fig salary while non-gov blokes choke in jobless ruin.

I thought we were all heroes. I marched in local Philadephia Treason Celebration Day parade on July 4 with Veterans for Peace surrounded by veterans begging for adulation, and they were feted by the braying and frothing masses of military worshippers. I guess between Micah Johnson and this guy, they are not all heroes. Who knew?

This is pure COINTELPRO tactics, identical to FBI infiltration of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s, or of the Students for a Democratic Society, in which informants encouraged activists to conduct acts of violence for which they could be arrested and their groups discredited.

The FBI thinks they can always control such activities so they don’t get out of hand, but what if their approach helps radicalize someone who then gets out of their control and conducts something like the Oklahoma City bombing? That seemed to play a role in the Orlando mass shooting, at some level.

You really get a picture of the FBI as being reckless and incompetent, when you look into this aspect of their ‘law enforcement’ mentality. Despite supposed Church committee exposure in the 1970s, these programs have continued throughout the 1990s (when they targeted mainly environmental groups) and, through the Bush Administration (with a focus on anti-Iraq War groups), and now it seems that Muslims, whistleblowers, journalists and online activists are the top targets, during the Obama era. Doubtless BlackLivesMatter groups are also being targeted by such methods, as well:

Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation’s premier crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has always functioned primarily as America’s political police. This role includes not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of political dissidents and groups, but often times, counterintelligence operations to thwart those activities. The techniques employed are easily recognized by anyone familiar with military psychological operations.

I am worried about the wording of several of these laws, but how much further was the government supposed to let this guy go? According to the indictment, he had the number of someone he thought was in ISIS and gave them particulars to access $500 in cash. He contacted someone he thought was in ISIS asking what kind of gun they wanted and then he went out and bought it. He at least said he was interested in shooting someone down for organizing Draw Muhammad contests. While it might have been reassuring if the FBI had manipulated him into some even more overt act, it sounds like they would have been taking chances with the lives of innocent people whose rights I want to see protected.

All that doesn’t mean I suddenly started believing in prisons. I see nothing amiss with the idea of offering the Caliph a prisoner exchange and letting this guy go enjoy his Syrian paradise for as long as he can stay out of the bomb-sights, in exchange for a few sex slaves or some foolhardy Western journalist.

The question is, how easy would it be to go and recruit someone this way, and what were the goals? People decry ISIS online recruitment efforts, but if the FBI sets up an online recruitment effort modeled on ISIS propaganda, aren’t they just spreading the same message? If the government is running such online efforts, shouldn’t they by trying to talk people out of such behavior, rather than encouraging it to the point where the target takes action and is then arrested so some FBI agent and his crew of informants can get a prosecution and perhaps a promotion?

And what about the collaterals, people who may have been influenced by the online propaganda effort but who the FBI is unaware of?

It just seems like a reckless policy with a real risk of unintended consequences. Suppose they help radicalize someone like the Dallas police shooter, or another Timothy McVeigh? When you push people over the edge, how do you know how far they’ll go?

I don’t know, maybe they just don’t care, maybe they are happy to see outbreaks of mass violence inside the United States because it helps justify their continued budget and even expansions of it? Promoting terrorist attacks that justify the continuation of the global War on Terror, to keep the military-industrial contracts flowing? Could they be that evil and reckless in their outlook? Perhaps.

but if the FBI sets up an online recruitment effort modeled on ISIS propaganda, aren’t they just spreading the same message?

But it did not play out this way. The indictment indicates that the suspect had already been in contact with “Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1 (UCC1)”:

Based on conversations between Confidential Human Source 1 (CHS1) and UCC1, and CHS1 and Jalloh, UCC1 had communicated with Jalloh before Jalloh was ever contacted by CHS1

This alleges that Jalloh reached the UCC1 before interacting with the FBI source. UCC1 then contacted the FBI source and mentioned Jalloh which is when the FBI probably took notice.

If the government is running such online efforts, shouldn’t they by trying to talk people out of such behavior, rather than encouraging it to the point where the target takes action and is then arrested so some FBI agent and his crew of informants can get a prosecution and perhaps a promotion?

Good question. I’d be interested to know if any countries use surveillance and confidential sources to reprogram/redirect instead of indict. I’d imagine the FBI would bristle at the thought because it would mean they’d have to assume more risk.

I don’t know, maybe they just don’t care, maybe they are happy to see outbreaks of mass violence inside the United States because it helps justify their continued budget and even expansions of it? Promoting terrorist attacks that justify the continuation of the global War on Terror, to keep the military-industrial contracts flowing? Could they be that evil and reckless in their outlook? Perhaps.

As long as investigators are getting paid, I guarantee you they could not give a rat’s ass about the FBI’s overall budget, which increases in good or bad times. There is no fear for loss of a job in the federal government!! To be fired you pretty much have to solicit a hooker in a government vehicle while doing drugs and parking across three (not two) handicapped lanes in the local church parking lot.

That’s the FBI’s claim, but what if (as seems plausible) the ‘un-indicted co-conspirator 1′ is the FBI’s agent provocateur who initiated the whole thing, and who the FBI is not naming because they want to keep that person busy at his task?

It would not be surprising if they wanted to keep the ‘deep cover’ UCC1 person out of the legal loop, and have CHS1 play that role, but isn’t it highly likely both were working for the FBI?

That’s the FBI’s claim, but what if (as seems plausible) the ‘un-indicted co-conspirator 1? is the FBI’s agent provocateur who initiated the whole thing, and who the FBI is not naming because they want to keep that person busy at his task?

Had he lied in the affadavit, The Special Agent signing it could face perjury charges. That seems like quite the gamble for a small fries case like this.